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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  Inside of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge: The Same

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.

Cambridge

Inside of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge: The Same

By William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

WHAT awful pérspective! while from our sight

With gradual stealth the lateral windows hide

Their portraitures, their stone-work glimmers, dyed

In the soft checkerings of a sleepy light.

Martyr, or king, or sainted Eremite,

Whoe’er ye be, that thus, yourselves unseen,

Imbue your prison-bars with solemn sheen,

Shine on, until ye fade with coining night!—

But, from the arms of silence,—list! O, list!—

The music bursteth into second life;

The notes luxuriate, every stone is kissed

By sound, or ghost of sound, in mazy strife;

Heart-thrilling strains, that cast, before the eye

Of the devout, a veil of ecstasy!